If you are reading this, chances are you are just as bored as I am with WoW at the moment (or you’re a butthurt paladin trying to come back at Lord Hydra, heh). That is mainly because the season still hasn’t started yet. Not only do we have to wait for at least another week for the season to start, but we also don’t have very much information about gear. With what we do know though, we can start brainstorming a little and try to predict some trends we will see in the upcoming month.

One thing that we do know is, that the resilience changes are now live. Blizzard promised a decrease in damage between 10 – 20% depending on how much resilience the target wears. Sounds neat on paper. I think that we can all pretty much agree that burst was too high. OK maybe some of you, especially the ones with keyboard prints in their faces from rolling, don’t. I don’t care about you though, at least not the one with the S-key in his face.

What we can pretty much say is that Wizard cleaves will lose even more steam than they have been lately. They all lack 50% MS, some of them lack CC and outlasting ability. No situation you really want to be in in season 8 even if you are in full wrathful. What you want to have for season 8 is a team with at least 2 out of three of the above attributes. RMP for example has strong CC and 50% MS which will allow for enough lockouts to kill targets before it becomes a battle of the mana bars but even there it isn’t too bad.

„Wait Yiska… 50% MS, good CC and outlasting ability. That’s fucking WLD!“ Yes folks, it very much is. While I expect Blizzard to tone down healing a notch (probably ~2 weeks into season 8), WLD will once again be a top comp. Some of us already saw in hoodrych’s video that it is already a very capable comp. It will become even better. Druids are still the healers with the highest amount of healing they can ditch out before going oom and when you can’t exploit their weakness of too many switches because the target doesn’t die as fast anymore, they become even better. They won’t need to prehot as much anymore as well and therefore they overheal less. If it’s enough for them to start CC’ing with Cyclones again? Probably not. Moreover I think that Shadow Cleave might become a  somewhat inferior comp to WLD. Death Knight had better support to keep the warlock alive, but they lack MS. If the Warlock is not in much danger, Death Knights will become second tier for a Druid/Lock duo who want to pick up a 3rd.

The question is, are we all nostalgically dreaming of the „better“ days of TBC and are we overestimating the influence the resilience buff will have. You have to take into account that Wrathful will be a big damage boost again and that many people are already resilience capped. (at least the healers) How much more survivability will this really grant?

If the games become longer though, it also means that there are more chances for amazing players to set themselves apart from the „only“ good ones. Some games were truely ridiculous in season 7 and when I think of Destrolock/Elemental Shaman/ Healer, I can’t honestly see how players would’ve played better against me than they did. They pressed two keys and I died pre immunity within a global. Daanzka’d. That is still probably more a testament to me being a scrub, but I hope you get my point. Being efficient in WoW Arena often meant to spam damage and never go defensive in season 7. Rambo would be Relentless Gladiator.

One winner in general of a slower game will of course be the  affliction warlock. It is a little sad though since it really felt like Shadow Priest was making a come back and they will still probably remain viable in some niche comps, but I think in some match ups you will see them have serious mana issues, a drawback that Warlocks don’t have and therefore Warlock will be the better pick in almost every comp.

I talked a bit about it with Kalimist and he told me that he isn’t too concerned about the situation. Pookz put it quite well I think, when he said that RMP will remain a comp that you can play with good players and a serious attitude, but nothing you should play with friends every once in a while. After what we saw in Brühl, I’m sure that deep down inside our team was cheering because cleave damage might become handable again.

We also have our beloved Holypaladins and while a slower game might help them a little with mana conservation because they can use Divine Purpose more often and carelessly, the ability of a paladin to stay out of dangerous CC-chains remains the same. Only the very top notch paladin will be able to understand when to use his outs and games will last a longer than the 2 minute mark. From there on, you can really see the difference between good and great paladins. I recall one particular game of Zilea’s TSG in which he faked Kollektiv quite well and kept him and his team alive long enough for his team to score a kill and win the game which enabled them to go to the grand finals, become second in the US and later become World champions at Blizzcon. We will see a lot more of these situations I reckon and we will of course see Zilea fake cast himself to death as well.

Season 8 looks

Since Blizzard just updated their site for the Arena season gear armor sets, I thought I might as well just go ahead and share my opinion. You can find them here.

• Death Knight: Looks very DK’ish. Definitely became a bit more massive which I like. The goat skulls are definitely neat. A decent looking set, but nothing “woah” really.
• Druid: The set looks very random to me. Maybe I don’t get it, but I don’t see a real topic in their looks. I really don’t like the general form of druid shoulders with them always leaving so much space between the shoulder armor and the actual body. With some creativity you can guess the helm is meant to be a falcon. It really gets old though.
• Hunter: I like the horns and one has to see them on an Orc. I really like massive shoulders like the Shaman tier 10 with that gimmick animation. The helm is obviously not modeled for a Human so one has to see how it looks on the Hunter races. If they really hide the eyes, it’s definitely an epic fail.
• Mage: I might be biased here (duh we talk looks) but I personally think that this is one of the best Mage sets in PvP ever for one simple reason: It looks like a warlock set and lock sets mostly own. The way the head is set up definitely reminds one of the naxxramas warlock sets. I’d really like to see a set where the shoulders float that far out like the part of the head does though.
• Paladin: Finally not such a gay color. There is definitely more bling and overall it really looks like Xzibit pimped S7, with crome and shit.
• Priest: Easy to figure out that this is a Priest set. Now most sets really didn’t significantly change from the s7 set but Priest changes are really minor. I like season 7 better though, the colors were nicer. It won’t really fit Undead as well, sorry Lord Hydra.
• Rogue: What the f? Looks like Rogue S7 shoulders had a little too much viagra last night while pleasing warlock mums. It looks like a perverted version of a Power Ranger. If you ever need someone to open a beer bottle in arena, you want to team up with a Rogue.
• Shaman: Again a set that I must see on an Orc, but it really looks much like the Priest set, despite that the shoulders are  crystallized. Minerals and gas? SC players would say that this is op. WoW that was lame…
• Warlock: And just when I thought Mages were finally better looking than Warlocks, we get to see this. Best Head or Best Head? The shoulders are amazing as well. FFFFFFFFFFFFFfffffffffffffffffff
• Warrior: Is anyone else amused that the melee doesn’t have a very effective helmet? Anyway, it looks badass. That on an Orc? Orcasm. I’m so lame today…

Anyway, I leave you with this. Have fun waiting for Season to begin. WOW I’M LAME.